


No one looks in the rearview mirror.

by Autopxy



Category: Death Note
Genre: Alternate Universe- Paranormal, Gen, M/M, Multi, One Shot, POV First Person, halloween fic, i have nothing to say, that is super late lmao, wtf is this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-30 19:47:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5177480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Autopxy/pseuds/Autopxy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day, we'll save them all, but today won't be that day.<br/>DN Paranormal AU; involving a strange town, surreal happenings, an unsolved mystery, and a journey far away from home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No one looks in the rearview mirror.

 

* * *

Once, just for the heck of it, I put a message in an empty soda bottle and then threw it into the ocean. It bobbed around for a few minutes, drifting further and further away in the rolling surf, before reaching deeper waters, and getting sucked violently under the surface. The next day, I found the same bottle buried in the sand by the coast, partially filled with a dark, putrid liquid. The old receipt that I had written on was replaced by some kind of parchment that had felt a suspiciously lot like amphibian skin, slightly reminiscent of the frog I once had to dissect in Biology; and the reply was written in another language, one that was completely unfamiliar, even after many Google Translate attempts. I threw the bottle back into the waves. The liquid stained the tip of my index finger a dark plum color, and gave me a blister on my pinky finger that lasted for a month. I stopped going to the beach after that.

* * *

 _I have a question for you,_ Ryuzaki says, turning to me with his free hand in his pocket. We're on break, and we're walking idly on the boardwalk until it's time to go back to work. As a snack, we've bought ice cream from a pushcart- he's got mint-chocolate chip; and he's convinced me to get sprinkles and chocolate sauce on my plain raspberry cone. It's teeth-numbingly cold, and disgustingly sweet, and the sugar is like gritty sand, but I eat it anyway because I somehow cannot find a dustbin anywhere.

_Ask away,_  I tell him.

_There's something that's always bothered me,_ he says, taking out his hand, and gesturing to the skyline.  _On more than one occasion, I've seen a seagull, hovering above the post office. It doesn't land, and it doesn't flap its wings, but it just stays there, motionless and high up in the sky as if frozen in time, waiting for something. Then, approximately five minutes after, the bird will plummet to the ground, dead._

I'm not surprised. Strange things happen here all the time, things that should not be happening in real life, but things that happen here anyway, until they are accepted without question, because asking will take up too much time. Of course, Ryuzaki questions everything, and part of me is glad that he does. Of course, part of me is put off by his strangeness, even by this place's standards- his too big eyes, his too pale skin, his too wild hair; but part of me finds comfort in it, because he makes me think, he pulls my mind out of the haze that surrounds this sleepy town. Whenever I am with him, I feel like I am more like me than I ever have been with anybody else.

_So,_ Ryuzaki continues, with an urgent insistence,  _What killed the bird, Light? What kills us all? Is it God, or is it this place, or is it both? Or is it something else?_

I don't know for sure. I never know for sure, here. There was one point in time where I wanted to become a detective, and solve all the world's greatest mysteries, but the glamor soon faded in the Town of Random, Unsolvable Mysteries, of dolls suddenly appearing at the bases of trees, and roads disappearing like mirages, and fields that slowly fill themselves with water, and then empty themselves at the blink of an eye. When I was younger, someone that I knew wandered into the grassy stretch connecting the beach to the terraces, the one that nobody walked through because it was overrun with wildflowers, and disappeared in a flurry of seeds. His Mother's nose bled for four days after that. Someday, there will be a reason for things happening, there will be a person, or even a ghost, or a curse, behind it all, and one day I will be able to solve the puzzle. But here, things just happen, and for now, I will continue trying for Ryuzaki's sake, because he is one of the only ones who truly cares about what I have to say. Process of elimination, then.

_It's probably this place, or something about this place,_ I tell Ryuzaki, in all seriousness. There is no God, here.

He nods, solemnly, and I can tell that he understands.

* * *

One time, when I was in the woods taking photos for my school photography class, I saw a tree branch shaped like a hand grab a squirrel and crush it with a splintering of bark and teeth and bones.

_Snap_ , went the squirrel, and  _Snap_ , went the shutter. The picture that I took shows the squirrel perched in the palm of the hand, with all its five fingers extending gracefully towards the warmth of the sunlight. I won a competition. My parents were so proud. 

* * *

I change the prices on the labels while Ryuzaki works the cash register. Our store is constantly lowering our prices to compete with the convenience store down the street, and its a major hassle for me because I have to keep up. In my opinion, their store is newer, and better, and I don't get why people even bother still coming here anymore. I've been there a more than a couple times, and realized almost immediately that the girl working there is more efficient than both Ryuzaki and I put together. She's fairly new to the town, compared to the rest of us, anyway, and she's small and blonde and sweet, and so peppy all the time that it's like she's stretching herself thin because her cheer seems to be tinged with just the slightest bit of melancholy. The first time that I was in the store, a display case of snacks just fell over with no provocation, at the same time that all the can drinks in the cooler just opened by themselves, spraying froth everywhere like somebody's science fair volcano.  _Sorry,_  she said to me apologetically, _this happens sometimes._  I knew all too well how this happens sometimes, and so I tried to help, but she waved me back, and cleaned up the mess in record timing. I could see through the curtain of her hair that she was blinking rapidly, but her glossy red smile never wavered.

Now that I think about it, she'll probably be visiting soon. She comes over every so often because like our boss, her boss requires her to take periodic trips to gather surveillance on the competition. Not that Ryuzaki or I mind because we get to spend an hour or so chatting with her. We've become very good friends over the last few months, despite the bumpy start. The first time she came over, she told us that her name was Misa, and that she eventually wanted to model, before screaming because she had walked into one of the cobwebs at the back of the store. Me and Ryuzaki seemed to never be able to get rid of those particular webs, because every time we swept them away they would reappear immediately after we turned our backs; and we had also seemed to have forgotten to tell her to watch out for them. That particular cobweb would never reappear in that particular corner, but the silvery strands would remain in Misa's hair the next few times we would see her. As if that wasn't enough drama for the day, after she left, I had to listen to Ryuzaki rant for half an hour about how unfair it was that some people had the option of getting money off looks alone while everyone else had to slave away,  _actually working_ , glaring in the direction that she had left, as well as periodically at me. I had to buy him a lollipop with my own money just to get him to shut up. However, the third time that we went over, after we had helped her to get most of the candy off the ceiling, after they had decided to spontaneously start levitating, she told us that her parents were murdered when she was fifteen, and that she ran away from her orphanage and ended up here after hitchhiking. Ryuzaki, an orphan living with an awful foster mother himself, warmed to her considerably after that.

* * *

When I was younger, there used to be a man that followed me wherever I went, but nobody, could see him but me. Actually, scratch that, because it wasn't entirely true, because it turned out that I couldn't really see him either. Even from the beginning, I could only ever see him from the corner of my eye. A flash of golden hair here, the outline of a broad, presumably western build, there. I heard him more than I saw him, most times. He babbled a lot about random things, asked a lot of questions that didn't make sense, and said that his name was Marco Polo,  _like the explorer, but not really._  He once gave me a dollar to buy a packet of sweets. Another time, he gave me a band-aid when I tripped. When I was ten, curiosity got the better of me, and I forced myself to stare right at him, no matter how much I wanted my eyes to just slide past as per normal. He crumbled into pale green sand immediately, and I never saw him again. I never got to see how he looked like, and I couldn't decide if the resulting silence was welcome or deafening.

* * *

The bell on top of the glass door rings, and Misa steps in with a wide smile, her hair mostly out of her face and gathered into a ponytail.  _How did it go?_ She trills in greeting.  _Have you gotten them yet?_

Ryuzaki leans on the counter, and smiles back at her.  _We went to the post office and got them this morning._ He admits, pushing back his fringe.

She rushes over to both of us as fast as she can in her Mary Janes, and grabs one of each of our hands in her smaller ones.  _And?_  She pleads, looking up at us.

I tell her.  _Both Ryuzaki and I got into To-Oh._

She claps her hands.  _All the way in Tokyo! You guys did so great! This is what you've been waiting for, isn't it?_

I nod. We've been planning to leave for a while now. To-oh is our contingency plan, it's our backup to ensure that we have somewhere to go when we leave the town, and Misa has been nothing but supportive of the whole idea.

She pulls us into a hug, and we both soften against her. Her hair is soft and her perfume is fruity and it reminds me of all the times that Ryuzaki and I have been to her small flat, or that she's been to our houses, or that we've gone to the diner across the road, or to the movie theater, or the park together. She's become so much of a part of our lives that I don't know how it's going to be without her.  _I'm going to miss the both of you, s_ he whispers.

Ryuzaki surprises me by saying exactly what is on my mind.  _Do you want to come with us?_  He says, and I nod. I don't know why we didn't ask her earlier, but it just doesn't feel right to leave her behind because she hates this place as much as we do, and as much as everybody else doesn't. Most people here have grown accustomed to the town and it's paranormal ways , even finding it 'quaint' or 'charming', but Ryuzaki and I can feel the lack of logic to the sudden happenings slowly driving us insane, while Misa just plain hates it all.

Misa pulls away, and looks at the both of us. She's blinking too much again, but she nods and nods and nods. _I want that more than anything else in the world,_ she tells us.

* * *

Dad told me to get out while I still can. 

The day after Ryuzaki and I outlined our plans of escape, he called me into his room.  _You've decided to leave, haven't you,_ he says _._   _Do it,_  he tells me,  _go somewhere far from here. Anywhere else in Japan. Even Thailand, maybe, or China or Indonesia, or Vietnam._   _Go far, far away. Go travel, Light. Go live._

_How did you know?_ I asked him. 

_The look in your eyes,_ he said.  _I recognize it. I tried to leave, once, you know. But then I met your mother, and I changed my mind._ He continued,  _I also saw the same look on one of the boys I used to teach in the police academy. His name was Touta, and he was so scatterbrained that I had to help him organize his plan. I hear he's doing well in Kanto, now. Of course, you don't need my help. You'll do great on your own, with Ryuzaki. It takes a special type of person to leave the town, Light, and whatever it is, you've got it._

_Will you miss me?_ I ask.

_I'll miss you,_ he says, _as will Sayu and Mom, but they'll forget you, eventually. Most people forget everyone who leaves._ _That's why everybody seems to live their whole lives here, go to college here, work here, and no one seems to go away, or if they do, it's only for a while before they come back. But for you it'll be different._ _It'll be like a page has turned, and suddenly you won't exist anymore. But always know that you will always be loved, Light. By all of us._

_Come with me,_ I say. 

He touches my cheek tenderly.  _I can't,_ he says.  _I have to stay, for your mother and Sayu, and the next one who decides to leave. But you can. You have to go, Light. You have to go. But call me every once in a while, will you? So that I'll know you're okay._

_I'll fix this,_  I tell him. _One day, we'll come back and fix all of this. We'll save everyone, one day._

_You will, Light,_ he says,  _but it will be okay even if you don't. Even if you don't save us all, you will save yourselves, and that will be enough._

I flung myself into his arms then, and he hugged me just like he did when I was little.  _Light,_ he says,  _my son._

_Dad_ , I say,  _dad_.

* * *

It's early morning when we get into the car and start driving, and the sky slowly gets lighter as the sun rises and we get further away from the town, passing roadside stalls and paddy terraces and construction sites. Obviously, I'm the one driving, while Misa rides shotgun, seat reclined with her pink-painted toes on the dashboard, and Ryuzaki gets the entirety of the backseat to himself, although it's insufficient for his lanky frame to comfortably stretch out on horizontally the way he likes, so he hangs his feet out the window.

_It's funny how I've wanted to be a detective,_ I say to the both of them, _But we're leaving the place with the biggest mystery of all._

L's scribbling on an old map that he found tucked beneath the seat. _We still could solve it, you know,_ L says, _one day. When we're ready. We'll come back. We'll save them all, one day. We could do it, you know. Me and you._ He nudges Misa affectionately, _and her._

I think of Dad, and Mom, and Sayu. I think of Touta, however he may look like, wherever he may be. I think of the three of us, three kids in a car, ready to take on the rest of the world, before saving the part we left behind.

_Okay,_ I say. _Let's._

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was, oddly enough, based loosely, loosely off the 2015 Cambridge-Singapore, GCE O level, Elementary Mathematics (Papers 1 and 2) and English Language (Papers 1, 2 and 4) Examinations.  
> Get me, SEAB. 
> 
> Also, this fic was supposed to be a halloween thing, which kinda of explains its weirdness (besides the fact that it started out as crack (again), and the whole o-level thing AND the fact I'm a bit rusty); but like I'm late as usual. What can I say, stuff happened, and so this fic didn't. I actually have really really mixed feelings about this fic, and I think I might hate it, but I'm still posting it because quality control on this account is non-existent amiright? I really hope that you didn't expect too much from this because tbh I probably peaked at IDWTFHYVS, like i'll probably never top that. Go figure.
> 
> Okay so! IARMW. For the like two of you who care, new chapter soon. I'm so so so sorry for the wait, and leaving it hanging on that note. Soon!!! 
> 
> Love Ya and thank you for reading this weirdness!!! Happy super belated Halloween/ Birthday, L/ Nanowrimo! Xoxo


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